Chuck Stenzel - Terms

Terms

In some continental European languages, terms with a christening theme or etymology are preferred (e.g. "baptême" in French, "doop" in Dutch — mostly used in Flanders) or variations on a theme of naïveté and the rite of passage such as a derivation from a term for freshman (e.g. "bizutage" in French, "ontgroening" (de-greening) in Dutch —mostly used in the Netherlands—, "novatada" in Spanish, from "novato", meaning newcomer) or a combination of both, such as in the Finnish "mopokaste" (literally "moped baptism", "moped" being the nickname for freshmen, stemming from the concept that they would be barred from riding a full motorcycle at their age). In Latvian, the word "iesvētības", which literally means "in-blessings", is used, also standing for religious rites of passage, especially confirmation. In Swedish, the term used is "nollning", literally "zeroing". In Portugal, the term "praxe", which literally means "practice" or "habit", is used for freshmen initiation. In the Italian military, instead, the term used was "nonnismo", from "nonno" (literally "grandfather"), a jargon term used for the soldiers who had already served for most of their draft period. A similar equivalent term exists in the Russian military, where a hazing phenomenon knowing as Dedovshchina exists, meaning roughly "grandfather" or the slang term "gramps" (referring to the senior corps of soldiers in their final year of conscription). At education establishments in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, this practice involves existing students baiting or bullying new students and is called Ragging.

Often most or all of the endurance or the more serious ordeal is concentrated in an orgiastic collective session, which may be called hell night, or prolonged to a hell week and/or retreat or camp, sometimes again at the pledge's birthday (e.g. by birthday spanking), but some traditions keep terrorizing pledges over a long period, resembling fagging.